A little bit of excitement…I’m writing some food geek articles for Wired UK! I’m really thankful for such a cool opportunity to write about all things edible, techie, innovative, and just deliciously awesome for the website of one of the most kickass magazines in the biz . My first article on space-age sous-vide cooking and perfect steaks published yesterday (go read it!) and I’ll be honest, I’m kinda geeked out about it. Also a little freaked out about it. It’s a big step from rambling about whatever I want here to writing for a really popular site with tons of readers and an editor. Like I’m kind of embarassed to have forgotten to mention how to finish off the perfect steak, as pointed out by my astute and carnivorous friend Dan: ‘the best part of good steak is the char on the outside and there ain’t no char in the water jar, na’am sane?’

He’s poetic too.

As I told Dan and should have mentioned in the article, once you pull the steak out of the water oven, you slap it on a grill or in a pan on high heat and get a good sear. Mmmmmmmmmmm perfect steak. Writing the article made me want my own sous-vide machine, but since I can’t afford the one I referenced I might just have to make my own like the awesome one below from the author of the droolworthy food blog Inuyaki(and his Flickr photos here)

A hacked together machine like that made this:

Forget finishing off your steak on the grill when you can DEEP FRY it.Umm…Deep Fried Short Ribs?, you ask? Yup. Those beauties above were ‘cooked in a 135F/57.2C waterbath for 48 hours and then deep fried in 360F vegetable oil for a few minutes to crisp up the skin.’ Oh holy crap. Want steak now. Inuyaki, your food geek innovation is making me drool all over my keyboard.

I’m in a moment of consumption rather than production. I have some cool Rambling Restaurant posts coming once I get ahold of some photos/get my act together, but more importantly, I’ve been busy reading a lot of amazing food articles that I want to share.

CHOW.com’s baker’s dozen of provocateurs, trendsetters, and rabblerousers in food. Butchers, brewers, Slow Food-ers, and more. These people rock.

Michelle Obama is going to cameo on Iron Chef America on Battle: White House Garden. Cristeta Comerford, the White House chef and Bobby Flay vs. Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse. I love her.

And lastly, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote a beautiful piece in the Food Issue of the New York Times Magazine, an excerpt from his book called Eating Animals. It’s about food, family, history, memory, inconsistent vegetarianism, and ultimately, not eating animals. In just a few pages it made me laugh and made me cry.